Can poor people be protected by global warming laws?

Heat waves, droughts and floods affect poor people disproportionately, according to a new report that recommends legislation to alleviate the impact as the climate warms.

African Americans living in Los Angeles have a projected heat-wave mortality rate that is nearly twice that of other Los Angeles residents, according to researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of California Berkeley who focused on the growing field of "environmental justice." And Latinos are the primary population in many neighborhoods and regions, including Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley, that have the worst air quality in the nation.

The report, "The Climate Gap, Inequalities in how Climate Change hurts Americans and How to Close the Gap" comes as the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress are grappling with how to design systems to control greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. And how they are designed will have a major impact on low-income neighborhoods located near refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities that also spew unhealthful conventional pollutants.

"People of color will be hurt the most -- unless elected officials and other policymakers intervene," said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a UC Berkeley researcher.

Next week, the California Assembly is expected to take up a bill, AB 1404, that would drastically limit the amount of greenhouse gases that polluters could offset by paying emitters in other regions to cut their gases. Under loose guidelines adopted by the California Air Resources Board under the state's landmark global warming law, up to 49% of greenhouse gas pollution could be reduced through offsets such as planting trees or capturing landfill gases.

But  AB 1404, introduced by Assembly members Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) and Manuel Perez (D-Coachella), would limit offsets to 10% and charge fees to fund careful verification of their integrity. "The big loophole in California’s otherwise exemplary global warming program would allow polluters to buy “offsets” — credits that polluters can buy for emission reductions elsewhere as a substitute for making reductions themselves, "said Erin Rogers of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. "California’s big global warming polluters should invest in local solutions instead of buying offsets and continuing to pollute as usual."

More than 60 California public health groups and labor unions  -- who want to maintain green jobs in the state rather than allow offsets to occur outside California -- support the legislation.

But it is opposed by industrial groups who want flexibility in meeting greenhouse gas targets. "An arbitrary limit..would result in higher costs for energy and infrastructure providers that would be passed along to state and local governments," according to a letter to legislators from the Western States Petroleum Assn., the California Chamber of Commerce and other business groups.

A battle is looming in Congress over whether offsets to federal limits on greenhouse gases are overly broad. The principal legislation, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly HIlls) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) would allow U.S. industries to offset up to 2 billion metric tons of gases per year, and a majority of the offsets could come from projects outside the U.S.

The Climate Gap report recommends that federal and state legislation force industries to purchase permits to emit greenhouse gases through an auction system, or a fee system. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week proffered the same advice to a state working committee that is designing the system.

 According to the researchers, offering fewer free pollution permits to oil facilities, which are mostly located in minority and low-income neighborhoods, would be particularly effective in cleaning up unhealthful air that is linked to heart disease and respiratory illness.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Photo: Smoke billows during a malfunction at a Wilmington, CA refinery. Credit: Richard Hartog /Los Angeles Times.

Comments

[Brenda Garcia]

I find this quite interesting. But i'm not surprised that certain people are more affected by pollution and global warming than others. I just hope that something can be done to get rid of pollution so that people will no longer have to suffer from it. I really hope scientists are successful in finding new ways that can protect people from the dangers of global warming.

[AntonioSosa]

To start protecting people of color and all Americans against global warming laws, we must fight Obama's criminal global warming/cap and trade scam, more fraudulent than any Nigerian scam.

Cap and trade represents huge taxes and cost increases, which will hurt mostly the poor and the middle class. Cap and trade will give dictatorial powers to Obama and will further enrich his billionaire friends (Gore, Soros, Goldman Sachs, Obama’s Chicago Climate Exchange friends, GE, etc.) -- all at our expense and at the expense of our children and grandchildren.

Cap and Trade “would be the equivalent of an atomic bomb directed at the U.S. economy—all without any scientific justification,” said famed climatologist Dr. S. Fred Singer. It would significantly increase taxes and the cost of energy, forcing many companies to close, thus increasing unemployment, poverty and dependence.

Those brainwashed to the point of wanting to destroy the economy to "prevent global warming" are behaving like the most primitive human beings who were duped into believing that human sacrifices would ensure them good weather. Human beings don't have the power to control climate! And killing the economy will not help the environment. Poor countries can’t protect the environment. Just look at Haiti!

More and more scientists and thinking people all over the world are realizing that man-made global warming is a hoax that threatens our future and the future of our children. More than 700 international scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims. They are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3562/218/

Additionally, more than 30,000 American scientists have signed onto a petition that states, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." http://www.petitionproject.org

We pray that honest leaders – both Democrat and Republican - are able to save us from Obama's criminal global warming/cap-and-trade scam.

[PAUL TAYLOR]

Noted urban policy analyst and author Joel Kotkin put it precisely when in 2008 he wrote: “California’s eco-groups have contrived legal and regulatory processes that provide the wealthy and their progeny an opportunity to act out their desire to ‘make a difference’ -- often without real concern for the outcome. Environmentalism becomes a theater in which the privileged act out their narcissism to gain green redemption.” The impractical result is a labyrinth of costly and often redundant environmental regulations that punish innovation and prosperity, and impose ubiquitous increased costs of living upon those among us who can least afford them.

[tehdude]

People of color will also being paying the most for the regressive global warming taxes.

People of color, people as I like to call them, drive cars and use the products of industrial civilization just like the rest of us. They, however, don't have the disposable income of the intelligentsia to pay a guilt fee to cleanse them of their sin of being alive.